Not In His Backyard!
Texans preparing to see their homes bulldozed would like to know why DHS is skipping some choice properties as it lays down the border wall:
As the U.S. Department of Homeland Security marches down the Texas border serving condemnation lawsuits to frightened landowners, Brownsville resident Eloisa Tamez, 72, has one simple question. She would like to know why her land is being targeted for destruction by a border wall, while a nearby golf course and resort remain untouched.
Tamez, a nursing director at the University of Texas at Brownsville, is one of the last of the Spanish land grant heirs in Cameron County. Her ancestors once owned 12,000 acres. In the 1930s, the federal government took more than half of her inherited land, without paying a cent, to build flood levees.
Now Homeland Security wants to put an 18-foot steel and concrete wall through what remains.
Just 69 miles north, Daniel Garza, 76, faces a similar situation with a neighbor who has political connections that reach the White House. In the small town of Granjeno, population 313, Garza points to a field across the street where a segment of the proposed 18-foot high border wall would abruptly end after passing through his brick home and a small, yellow house he gave his son. "All that land over there is owned by the Hunts," he says, waving a hand toward the horizon. "The wall doesn't go there."
"I don't see why they have to destroy my home, my land, and let the wall end there." He points across the street to Hunt's land. "How will that stop illegal immigration?"
The Observer was unable to get any answers as to why some properties were being passed over, and it seems premature to conclude much of anything about the process. But Garza's question applies to the entire project: The wall will cover 370 miles of a 1951 mile border. That's not much "border security," but it's a lot of condemned property.
Whole thing here.
